Wrong. Stores need traffic, which is why they locate on shopping streets, in large malls, offer large discounts at times and use loss leader products, and buy advertising.
Discords user base is traffic.
Discords user base is traffic.
That's incredibly reductive. Not all traffic is created equally. Reddit, for example, is notorious for providing awful bang for your ad buck[1].
> Discords user base is traffic.
Oh, I see, so Facebook and Google should've started online stores because of.. traffic? Of course not. If you build a (big enough) platform for free, one of the few viable ways to monetize is to do ads. Making a store is a very dubious prospect (which has not been received particularly warmly). If you're going to bring up Steam, keep in mind they had about a decade of first mover advantage.
The equation is relatively simple. Out of everyone that visits your online store, a small % will make a purchase. You can can both optimize quality and quantity of traffic. For traffic, you need to keep it coming every day, through out the year. Discord has that returning traffic/users. Game publishers do not.
(But as I mentioned previously, and you brushed off, traffic alone is an awful metric anyway.)